EIGHT
DAYS before our mother died, on April 4, 2011, we finally heard the
truth. Or rather, the truth had finally been spoken to us in a clear,
concise and unvarnished manner. Prior to that afternoon, Mom, Dad and we
11 children had each been living privately with the truth of Mother’s
illness nibbling away at our minds. Only rarely did we acknowledge to
one another where these diseases generally lead: to the church cemetery.
To speak of death aloud would have been a betrayal to our mother. Instead, by way of tacit agreement, an unspoken understanding developed
among us—an agreement that occasionally prompted us to make secretive
and worried eye contact in a way that neither Mom nor Dad would detect.
We were in the fourth week of Lent when truth arrived—a little over
halfway through the miseries and mysterie —and we would not realize
until after her death that we were about to experience the most honest
Lenten preparatory time of our lives, the holiest and most profound
Easter and, most of all, a glimpse of Pentecost. But before those many
graces were poured over us, we dug in our heels. Firmly. Resolutely.
Nobody goes willingly to a cross. Even the disciples argued vehemently
against it. And so, for 20 months, we tiptoed around the truth in a sort of dream state, praying that truth would not rise up and find our ears.

Each of Mother’s medical appointments found any three of my sisters
sitting on the white-papered examining tables—their feet dangling and
swinging like kindergartners—while the other girls took the chrome
and vinyl chairs on the floor next to Mom and Dad. Our brothers stood
and constantly blocked the entrance so that doctors and nurses had to
continually apologize in order to squeeze into the room.

Once the doctor entered the room, whichever of our brothers had
been seated on the doctor’s rolling stool would relinquish the stool
immediately and stand red-faced in the corner while we girls rolled our
eyes.

The doctor would ask Mother how she was. She always said, “Fine,”
to which he predictably smiled in return, patted her knee and then
turned away from us to peer at his computer screen. Meanwhile, we became
adept at deciphering nonverbal cues sent zinging across the tiny
medical cubes into which our family of 13 had poured ourselves.

Nobody talks plainly anymore. And nobody has the courage to ask
plain questions. For 20 months we wanted to ask, “How long until our
mother dies?” And yet, for 20 months, none of us, especially Mom, wanted
to know. She refused to consider death. So for 20 months we toured
limbo until the brutality of truth spewed over us on April 4, 2011.

The shattering of our defenses occurred during Mother’s last
appointment at the Coburn Cancer Center in St. Cloud, Minn. And we were
mad as hell. Why hadn’t they told us sooner? Perhaps we would have been
kinder had we known how loudly the clock was ticking.

Oncologists had been vague about her prognosis. Diagnosis, on the
other hand, was always crystal clear. After all, a picture is a picture,
and Mother’s lungs were taking on a rather polka-dotted look. Her
doctors seemed to love their laptops, preferring to study her uploaded
image rather than look into our mother’s sad blue eyes.